Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Scott McGehee and David Siegel | The Deep End

Scott
McGehee and David Siegel, based on the novel by Elizabeth Sanxay and the film
by Max Ophuls, The Reckless Moment),Scott McGehee and David Siegel (directors) The Deep End / 2001

The
gay directorial team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel chose in 2001 to rewrite
Max Ophul’s womens’ melodrama, The
Reckless Moment, producing in their The
Deep End a credible and skilled film production, which, although it had
long been part of our large DVD collection, I had not seen until other day,
after viewing their less successful What
Maisie Knew.

By shifting the Ophuls film into a
contemporary story where—instead of a young girl dating an older man, we have
an almost underage gay boy, Beau (Jonathan Tucker) in the emotional
influence of a sleazy 30 year old owner of a Reno gay bar called The Deep End, Darby
Reese (Raymond J. Barry)—we immediately recognize, today, as a far more
problematic situation—or perhaps we should simply say it better helps us to
comprehend the difficult situation with which the original version’s mother,
Joan Bennett, had to deal when faced with her teenage daughter Bea’s (Geraldine
Brooks) dominance by the older man of The
Reckless Moment, Ted Darby (Sheppard Strudwick).

The utterly loving mother in this film,
played brilliantly by Tilda Swinton (as Margaret Hall), is clearly not so
disconcerted that she has discovered her son’s homosexuality, as that he has
linked up with such a despicable being, who, having also introduced her son to
alcohol, has been partially responsible for a recent accident, wherein Beau has
been arrested—perhaps with the drunken Darby sitting next to him in the front
seat.

In the very first scene of the film, we
see the level-headed Margaret knocking at the door of the Reno gay
establishment, demanding to see Reese, who she demands must stop seeing her
teenage son. He, apparently, is willing to do so for a payment of $5,000,
which, when she confronts Beau about his offer, the troubled and, surely, duped
young boy refuses to believe; Reese has already telephoned him even before
Margaret has been able to return home.

Although Beau refuses to discuss the
relationship with him, despite her attempts to openly talk about it, Margaret
pushes on, dealing, despite her Navy husband’s absence (he is stationed
somewhere on a distant military ship), with another son and daughter, cooking
the family meals, and, with other friends, chauffeuring the younger children
between their school, soccer, ballet, and other activities. Swinton plays this
contemporary-mother role with great aplomb, refusing to turn it into melodrama,
while representing her character’s personality, nonetheless, with a steely, if
nearly impossible, managing of what it takes to me a liberated woman. If, in
the original, we perceive Joan Bennett, as I have argued, as an isolated woman,
protected in her suburban culture from all of the urban pressures of nearby Los
Angeles, here, in the glorious environs of Tahoe Lake, Margaret is put-upon by
nearly everything. And she cannot even reach her husband to discuss her
emotional and, later, real-life dilemmas. And, in this respect, like Ophul’s original
film, this is very much a woman’s story, despite its early gay perspective.

McGehee and Siegal almost convince us that
the two are part and parcel of the same thing: a caring, dominant mother and a
missing father surely have encouraged the confused young son seek out some
emotional replacements in his life, and Reese may, despite his despicable
qualities, be an attempt to find the seemingly always missing father’s love.

Fortunately, the directors do not attempt
to psychoanalyze their characters. Mostly these figures, despite their familial
love, simply cannot communicate with one another; they are all too confused,
too hurt, and too much in love.

But that condition, of course, also
results in misconceptions for all involved, and creates the intense drama of
the film’s plot. When Beau is visited, late-night, by Reese at his home, he
attempts to quiet his lover with a visit to the boathouse, where he challenges
him about his love and questions the older man about his mother’s accusations.
Discovering that, indeed, his mother has told him the truth, and that he has,
in fact, taken her up on her offer of money to keep him away, even the
believing Beau recognizes something is “rotten in Denmark,” and pulls away from
the older man, who hurt by the young man’s refusal, attempts to punish him.
Like the fight between the young girl in Ophul’s film and the older man, Reese
is slightly stunned (both physically and psychologically) by his violent
rejection, and, after Beau leaves him, he stumbles out to pier, only to fall
into a rotting fence into the water below, killing him (in both stories,
improbably, he falls into an old anchor which impales him, and I do not
comprehend why McGehee and Siegel had not attempted to update that absurd
situation).

Beau, knowing nothing of the aftermath,
returns to his room, like any ruffled teenager, refusing to discuss any of the
events he has just undergone. So, accordingly, when the next morning his mother
discovers the horrible accident and the body, she can only presume—or perhaps
one should say, she tragically and mistakenly, assumes the worse: her son has
killed his aggressor.

Of
course, that is the problem; although Reese has, indeed, become an aggressor,
it is only because of her actions that he has become a “dangerous” one. But
neither movie feels open to really discuss that. Margaret, after all, is also
an innocent, who cannot easily comprehend the complex events she has just
encountered. Her instincts are those of a loving mother: get rid of the
evidence. And with a remarkable resilience and almost fantastic ability, she
manages to pull the body into a nearby speed boat, and toss him off into a
removed spot, later even returning to that spot, nearly drowning in the
attempt, to retrieve his car keys so that she might move the victim’s car to a
far-away location.

Oh the impossibilities of being a model
mother! For moments after she hasaccomplished the “murdered” man’s ocean burial, but she has to curry her
daughter and younger son to their current events as she is, simultaneously,
visited by the surely evil Alek Spera (Goran Višnjić) demanding $50,000 in
blackmail for a porno film between her son Beau and the dead man, which, if
turned over to the police, will surely involve him in the disappearance—and,
more frighteningly, the murder of Reese—whose body has now been discovered by
police.

What’s a good mother to do? And, if
nothing else, Margaret is the perfect mother, attempting to get loans (which if
her husband were there, would be no problem) and remove monies from their joint
accounts (always needing the missing husband’s signature)—all of which further
reveals these director’s quite feminist perspectives. No one can help a busy
woman, a mother, a housewife, to deal with such life-altering changes; only a
man can accomplish it, evidently—despite her endless and startling
accomplishments.

Strangely, only her blackmailer, Spera,
seems to comprehend her situation, trying, despite threats on his own life, to
negotiate a smaller deal with his handler, Nagel. It is only fate, an accident
which kills Nagel and, moment’s later, Spera himself, whom Margaret tries to
comfort in his last death throes, ends in her and her family’s salvation.

Beau, resilient as most children are, has
applied for a music scholarship at Wesleyan, and will probably receive it (he
has been asked for 2 trumpet on-line recitals). At movie’s end, the telephone
rings out once again; this time, presumably, reporting on news from the
ever-missing husband, suggesting that the normality of society is about to return.
Yet, of course, one must question, what will that “normality” consist of?
Surely the memories which the entire family must now face—sublimated or still
present—may never be erased. And, in that respect, like Ophul’s film, the
McGehee and Siegel work is a kind of American tragedy about which no one dare
speak.